René de Ceccatty's 'Noir souci' and Maurizio Serra's Malaparte biography explore Leopardi and Malaparte

Two recent French publications delve into the lives of Italian literary giants Giacomo Leopardi and Curzio Malaparte. René de Ceccatty's 'Noir souci' (Flammarion) is a hybrid biographical essay on Leopardi, focusing on his last years and his intense, chaste relationship with the young revolutionary Antonio Ranieri, whom he met in Pisa on June 29, 1828. Ceccatty, who has translated Leopardi's 'Canti' (Allia), draws personal analogies between Leopardi's life and his own, addressing themes of sexless friendship, enforced silence, and companionship with death. He defends Ranieri against critics who accused him of appropriating Leopardi's memory, arguing that without Ranieri's preservation of Leopardi's manuscripts, the author of 'Zibaldone' might be unknown outside Italy. Meanwhile, Maurizio Serra's 'Malaparte' (Grasset) is a monumental biography of Curzio Erich-Suckert, known as Malaparte, author of 'Kaputt' and 'The Skin'. Serra traces Malaparte's tortuous path from fascist collaboration to later ties with the Italian Communist Party and Maoism, emphasizing his lack of racism and antisemitism. Serra's critical analysis highlights Malaparte's literary genius, particularly in a scene from 'Kaputt' where a cigar offered to a starving girl in the Warsaw Ghetto encapsulates horror and human dignity.